NEXTracker maintains dominance of global tracker market

The global market for solar trackers expanded by 20% in 2018, with total international shipments spiking 36% year-on-year to surpass the 20 GW mark, according to a new report by Wood Mackenzie. NEXTracker and Array Technologies maintained their industry dominance, but a number of smaller competitors claimed a greater share of the global market in the 12 months to the end of December than ever before.

Share

California-based NEXTracker held its lead over the PV tracker industry last year, claiming 30% of the global market in terms of shipments. New Mexico-headquartered Array Technologies also maintained its second-place position last year, accounting for roughly 12% of global deliveries.

“The new solar PV tracker leaderboard confirms the ongoing dominance of NEXTracker, which has more than twice the market share of its closest competitors globally,” Wood Mackenzie said in its recent report, Global Solar PV Tracker Market Shares and Shipment Trends, 2019. “The tier under NEXTracker is crowded with ambitious tracker companies that currently rival each other in size, give or take a few percentage points.”

However, PV Hardware raced up the rankings last year, ousting its fellow Spanish rival Soltec from third place to claim about 9% of the global market for solar trackers. China’s Arctech Solar took fourth place with roughly 9% of global shipments, while Murcia-based Soltec fell two spots in 2018 to close out the top five, with a share of approximately 8% of the global market for PV trackers by total shipments.

The United States and Latin America were the biggest geographical markets for tracker technology last year, Wood Mackenzie said. Roughly 5.85 GW of PV trackers were shipped throughout Latin America alone in 2018, followed closely by the U.S. market. However, the world’s top growth markets for solar trackers in 2018 were the Middle East, which expanded by 96% in 2018, and Australia, where annual shipments jumped by 74%.

“PV trackers continue to be the fastest growing of all racking segments, and is expected to continue on an upward trajectory as the global solar market surpasses 100 GW by the end of 2019,” Wood Mackenzie said.

The top five suppliers in Wood Mackenzie’s annual rankings all signed major supply agreements in 2018. NEXTracker, for example, secured a deal in November to provide NX Horizon solar trackers for a 255 MW solar project in New South Wales, Australia. And last May, Array Technologies revealed a three-year, multi-gigawatt tracker tie-up with U.S. solar developer sPower.

In January 2018, Arctech Solar started installing its trackers at a 10 MW PV array in Khafji, Saudi Arabia. And in October, Soltec started installing its trackers at an 84.7 MW solar project in Spain.

Share

Brian Publicover

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

1 comment

The same report finds Soltec #3 in cumulative tracker shipments through 2018. In 2017, Soltec entered the GW+ per year club of three with singular value propositions and architecture amongst the three. Now with seven in the 2018 club, one may notice that Soltec singularity is less pronounced, and recognize the proof of innovative tracker concepts finding traction in a market that is maturing in best practices.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment

Name *

Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Keep up to date

pv magazine USA offers daily updates of the latest photovoltaics news. We also offer comprehensive global coverage of the most important solar markets worldwide. Select one or more editions for targeted, up to date information delivered straight to your inbox.

Email*

Select Edition(s)*

Hold Ctrl or Cmd to select multiple editions.

We send newsletters with the approximate frequency outlined for each edition above, with occasional additional notifications about events and webinars. We measure how often our emails are opened, and which links our readers click. To provide a secure and reliable service, we send our email with MailChimp, which means we store email addresses and analytical data on their servers. You can opt out of our newsletters at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of every mail. For more information please see our Data Protection Policy.

Keep up to date

We send newsletters with the approximate frequency outlined for each edition above, with occasional additional notifications about events and webinars. We measure how often our emails are opened, and which links our readers click. To provide a secure and reliable service, we send our email with MailChimp, which means we store email addresses and analytical data on their servers. You can opt out of our newsletters at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of every mail. For more information please see our Data Protection Policy.

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.